


Austere and Lonely Offices

by ConstanceComment



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alpha Jean Valjean, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Community: makinghugospin, Father-Son Relationship, Formerly Anonymous, Gen, Kid Fic, Kink Meme, Omega Javert, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: Javert was born an omega, and kept a tight grip on his nature all his life with suppressants and other countermeasures. But one slip is all it takes; a short, unexpected heat hits him shortly before the release of prisoner 24601, and years later, a new inspector comes to the town of Montreuil with a child in his wake.





	Austere and Lonely Offices

**Author's Note:**

> This is a de-anonymization of a fill I did on the makinghugospin Les Mis kinkmeme back in 2013. I've only edited it slightly for grammatical purposes. Breaks have been inserted to represent the places where individual posts separated the story into sections 1-4 on the meme. Section 4, which was spread through multiple posts, has not been broken up in order to preserve reading clarity. The original prompt can be found [here](https://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/13488.html?thread=9820592#t9820592), and the original fill lives [here](https://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/13488.html?thread=10440368#t10440368).

There is a child that runs errands at the station house, a favorite informer to the police.

The boy’s origins are hard to place. He arrived in town a year ago, or so. Long enough that his presence has faded to background rumor, the sight of a sprightly, industrious child no longer able to set tongues wagging the way they once did. For a time, everyone remarked on him, the same as they did the new inspector that arrives from the south. Unlike the inspector, the boy was and is considered to be singularly unworthy of note, being too young to be interesting, but too old to be precious any longer. He is not poor enough to be remarkable in his hunger, too quiet to be a troublemaker, and too conscious of the law to be a gamin, though the way he learned to find his way around town proves that he would have the skills for it.

No one is sure, exactly, who the boy is, though he is somebody’s bastard, that much is certain. He answers to a different name every time he is seen; the baker calls him Luke. The widows that watch him take his messages through the town like to call him Emile, while the factory workers know him as Lucien. The criminals of the town (the few that are left) know him as the spy of the police, looking out at them with wide hazel eyes that notice everything, with a particular memory for faces and the ability to repeat back anything he hears with stunning accuracy.

The boy’s father calls him Michael, but no one knows who his father is, and Michael is not willing to say, knowing well when to be quiet. When they are alone, his father calls him son. When they are not, the boy is still Michael, and he is still his father’s son, just not where people can see. Michael does not mind this; he knows what happens to men with children that they bore themselves.

Of the boy’s other parent, they never speak, and rarely allude to. All that Michael knows of them is that he must have one, even if they have never met. Michael has lived most of his life in or near Toulon bagne; he is smart enough to know that children do not come from nowhere. Of a mind to prevent more, his father takes herbs and wears perfumes which Michael does not like the smell of, though he appreciates the practicality of their purpose.

Sometimes he sees his father look at him, lingering on his eyes and hair, the way his shoulders suggest they will fill out someday. Michael knows that his father is seeing someone else and that he does not like the shape he sees. His father looks at him with eyes that are clouded and angry when he sees someone else imposed over his son, and Michael hates that he will almost certainly grow up to look like some other man, and not himself.

“Did you want me?” Michael once asked his father when he was very young. They did not live in the barracks, anymore, but in the town proper instead, where Michael had run errands and taken messages, like his father before him.

“I want you now,” his father said, putting on his stock for duty, which wasn’t an answer, though it was.

Michael grew up in a world of walls, where noise was punctuated by bursts of silence, and the sea got into everything. Now, he lives in a world where a river runs through it, and the walls may simply be navigated around. The ocean lives here only as a scent on the wind and the remnants of a name, same as the specter of his other parent, which sits waiting in their house in silent angers and unsaid longings.

Michael is not sure that he loves his father. He supposes that he does; to contemplate life without him is hard. If Michael were capable of admitting it to himself, he would call the prospect frightening, but of course the boy is proud, knowing full well that he has to give himself dignity, or else have it taken from him. Mostly, it is only that Michael has nothing to compare it to, loving his father or not. There is no one in their lives but each other. Maybe that is enough.

* * *

It is cold in Montreuil. Winter comes with falling snow that is white until it touches the ground, where it smears from contact with reality, turning wet and gray.

Michael watches it fall, tracking the slight arc of each piece as a slight wind blows it all about. He feels the soft clumps landing on his shoulders as he darts throughout the town, small missives carried in his hands, and more messages waiting in his mind.

Today, he carries something to the factory; his father has a message for the Mayor, who Michael has never met, but has heard of, and seen sometimes, though never looked at long, or well. The other children of the town seem to like him; he makes them dolls out of common things like straw and twine, and tells quiet stories if the children will listen. The young beggars like him too, as Michael had heard before they caught on that he himself was a young informer, and ceased speaking with him at all. Apparently, the Mayor is exceptionally generous to the beggars as well as the common children; he seems to _allow_ them to steal from his pockets, which confuses and irritates Michael. Is it still theft if the victim condones and facilitates the offense?

What is most important is that his father has no small regard for this man, which is why Michael has not reported on the Mayor's habit of allowing the town's poor children to rob him. Michael knows that his father has a great regard for the Mayor, because when his father relayed this message today he did so on paper, and Michael’s father normally would not like the waste. Too, his father wears a rosary that must have come from these jet factories, though he knows his father holds no special love of God, having rarely taken Michael to a church. This morning, Michael’s father had handed the missive parchment to him, nodding at Michael before he went bounding into the streets, his father first making certain that his patched coat was ready for the cold, fussing somewhat with the buttons until Michael squirmed away, batting at his father’s calloused hands.

The factories area common sight in town. People come and go from them constantly, significant numbers of the citizenry employed in one or the other. Michael knows to attribute it to the Mayor, like many of the better things about the town. It had not prospered without him, it seems. This is most likely why Michael’s father likes him; he tends towards those that mind their duties, and certainly, shepherding the people would be the duty of a mayor.

The Mayor is not in the women’s factory when Michael arrives, though that is where his father sent him. The Foreman offers to take the message to the Mayor himself when the man returns, but Michael declines, biting at the inside of his cheek, telling the man that he will wait. He has nowhere else to be, at present, and it is warm enough inside the building, heated as it is by the bustle of the women about their tables, handling with routine their pieces of jet.

“Suit yourself,” the Foreman shrugs after a moment’s squinting, and lets Michael install himself on a nearby crate, tucking himself into a corner by the window, watching the snow pile in drifts against the glass.

He practices becoming unknowable. Michael has seen the way his father can hide in shadows, a policeman’s trick of hiding in plain sight, or else blending in the darkness. Michael has been practicing the skill since Toulon, though it has become harder as he has been growing taller, his shoulders spilling out to necessitate new clothes and wider shirts. He has not mastered the skill yet, but he thinks he will soon, with time.

When the Mayor walks in, Michael nearly misses him. His coat is olive green, and his lack of gloves is appalling in this weather, given that the flush on his cheeks and the snow on his black leather boots making it clear to Michael that the Mayor has been for some time walking in the falling snow. Michael wonders that he could afford to have gloves and still go without them; the rich, he has learned, are strange in that way, to give up what they could otherwise have, and what some men would gladly steal for.

Though he does not know it yet, this is only the first thing that Michael will not understand about the Mayor.

* * *

Michael gets down off the crate slowly, one of his legs having fallen asleep. The light outside the window has changed, but the snow has not slowed or stopped. Afternoon is settling around the town with the piling drifts that have moved from gray to white as they accumulated, and Michael wrinkles his nose at the thought of having to run home through the mess.

Caught in a discussion with the Foreman about production, the mayor doesn’t seem to notice Michael until the boy has completely left his hiding place.

“Ah, hello,” the Mayor says, when he catches sight of Michael, and smiles with open hands, though his posture first called out an odd, wary confusion.

The boy says nothing, at first, preferring to observe. He likes to watch and has found in his short lifetime that quiet children can cause undue disquiet and that every person will react to this in different ways, revealing small things about them.

In the case of the Mayor, what Michael’s silent gaze provokes is fidgeting, and an attempt at polite boredom, or else confusion.

“Do you need something?” The Mayor prompts him when Michael does not move, or cease his staring.

When Michael still does not answer, the Foreman speaks for him. “It’s that brat from the stationhouse,” he tells the Mayor, rolling his eyes, “their young errand boy.”

The mayor, who had turned to look at his underling when the man spoke, now turns back to Michael. “The police have an errand boy?” He asks, and Michael is not sure to whom the question is directed, though only that he won’t be answering it either way. He doesn’t like the way that the Mayor is looking at him, the growing scrutiny of it. Most people who meet him are content to pass Michael over, resigning him to the role of child: growing but not grown; quiet, but not remarkable. Rarely does anyone pay close attention to him, and Michael prefers it this way.

Under the Mayor’s gaze, it is Michael’s turn to fidget.

“You don’t know him?” The Foreman asks, surprised. “He’s been working with them for a while now; word is that he’s a snitch, too. Anyway,” the Foreman continues, apparently unaware of the Mayor and the child’s mutual discomfort, “he said he has a message for you, from the station. Your officer, maybe?”

Michael bristles at the phrasing; he has never liked to hear his father referred to in the sense of the possessive. That’s how men of his nature always are described; like objects or trophies. Or worse, as whores. Things.

The Mayor frowns at the question but does not correct it. “Perhaps,” he allows, and begins to walk up the staircase to what Michael supposes must be his office, gesturing for Michael to follow. After a beat and a grinned dismissal from the Foreman, Michael follows the Mayor to the room.

* * *

The Mayor’s office is a Spartan affair. The mayor settles himself behind his desk, seemingly not overly concerned with Michael’s presence, though Michael had learned from necessity to know when he is being watched.

The desk gives the Mayor an air of authority. Imposing pieces of furniture tend to do that; it had been the same with the warden and his desk in Toulon, and it is equally true with Michael’s father and his desk at the station. As such, Michael forces himself not to cringe, or stand any straighter when the Mayor addresses him from across it.

“Who are you?” He asks again. “I don’t think I’ve heard of you, but you seem to have established yourself here in this town if even the Foreman knows about you.”

“I have a message,” Michael says instead of answering, and the man to take it seems to blink and start at the sound of his voice.

“That accent-” the Mayor starts before stopping, curious. “Where are you from?”

“The south,” Michael replies blandly, and holds out the paper his father had given him, thrusting his hand out at the Mayor, drinking the man in with his wide open eyes.

“Would you like me to make you a doll out of straw?” The Mayor asks, and this time it is Michael who blinks and starts, before he twigs to the circumstance. This man thinks he is still a child. The boy wants to scoff; games are frivolous, and like his father, he won’t take charity.

“Why would I need a doll of straw?” Michael asks the Mayor instead of speaking his mind, though he cannot help the way his lip curls in a sneer much like the one he has seen so often on his father’s.

This, too, makes the Mayor pause. “To play with, I suppose,” he offers slowly, before asking, still with that sound that grates, “do you not have a doll to play with?” Michael bristles at the tone; pity.

“Your message,” he repeats forcefully, and thrusts a child’s fisted hand at the Mayor once more, holding out his father’s missive.

When the Mayor stares at him, Michael thrusts it towards the man once more. Tentatively, the man takes it, reaching out slowly as if he does not want to scare Michael off. Once he is sure that the Mayor has secured the paper, Michael snatches back his hand, but he registers anyway calloused palms, more like leather than living skin, and wonders if this is why the Mayor did not need gloves.

Message delivered, Michael moves to leave, not caring much that he is being rude. There is something unnerving about the level of scrutiny that the Mayor puts him under, the gentleness with which he treats him. Michael is used to neither of these things from strangers, and in no way appreciates it.

“Wait!” The Mayor calls. Michael does not wait, but after two steps, he skids to a halt at the office threshold.

“What?” Michael asks him, and watches the way the Mayor’s eyes linger on the gangly height his limbs suggest. Michael wants to snarl at this man, but his father respects him. That must count for something, even if the boy himself does not yet trust the man.

“What is your name?” The Mayor asks him, frowning, curious.

“Luke,” Michael replies and leaves.

The stairs creak on the way down, so Michael takes them two at a time, wanting to be gone for reasons he only thinks he understands. This whole encounter has been unnerving to him, and he wants it done. He’d prefer the safety of the streets over the living uncertainty here in the factory.

“You have very old eyes,” says the Foreman, grinning when Michael scrambles by. Michael does not like that grin, nor the way that its owner looks at the women.

“And yours wander,” the boy snaps back, “and you smell bad, too.” Michael runs out the door while the man splutters, already barking harshly at the one woman who dared to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the poem _"Those Winter Sundays"_ by Robert Hayden and is short, so I will post it here.
> 
> "Sundays too my father got up early  
> and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,  
> then with cracked hands that ached  
> from labor in the weekday weather made  
> banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
> 
> I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.  
> When the rooms were warm, he’d call,  
> and slowly I would rise and dress,  
> fearing the chronic angers of that house,
> 
> Speaking indifferently to him,  
> who had driven out the cold  
> and polished my good shoes as well.  
> What did I know, what did I know  
> of love’s austere and lonely offices?"
> 
>  
> 
> Once upon a time, I had the outline to a fic that spanned the whole brick covering Michael's life. But that was five years ago, and written on a phone I definitely no longer own. So who knows if the outline still exists anywhere. But I do remember that all the other chapters were going to be named for other truly excellent poems about fathers and sons.


End file.
